Growing Lettuce

We picked our first lettuces two weeks back.

And had them freshly picked for tea in the garden with pizza.

Our cheeky garden robin landed on the table to scrounge some.

The lettuces were so delicious they needed no dressing.

But they were tiny.

One gardening friend said they were too close together.

But others say you can "cram 'em in" if you're a city gardener.

And the trick is to thin them out early in the greenhouse or when shoots first appear so have plenty of room when they're first growing.

My four year old wiggled her fingers right into the soil to carefully loosen them.

We picked them at the same time as our first radish crop.

And talked about how funny it was that on some plants you eat the leaves and on some the roots.

We haven't quite mastered this continuous salad crop planting thingie yet.

We should have planted every fortnight so we always had some ready.

And something ... the fox? ... dug up 3 or 4 of them so now we've none ready to eat and have had to hastily plant some more.

Planting Notes:

You can sow lettuce outside from March and harvest from late May. Sow every 2 weeks until July to have lettuces throughout the summer.

We started ours off in the greenhouse and found it easier to plant in separate sections of a tray or a tray divided with cardboard rolls or egg cartons.

Little Gems are nice and simple to grow, take up less space if you're an urban gardener and seem to be liked by lots of kids.

Do check out our other gardening with kids posts for more simple suggestions.

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